BASSA Go fruit loops again!
THE BALLOT
Monday, September 2nd, 2013
In a few days you will receive what will be one of the most important ballots in your flying career.
Why?
Because it is a once in a life time opportunity to not only ensure a fairer spread of earnings between everyone than ever before but to also secure greater protection of those earnings for the remainder of your career.
By now you will have studied all of the information that has been sent out, along with your ballot paper there will be a newsletter dedicated to the proposal containing full details of the pros and of course the cons to assist you in casting your vote.
This is your future; your vote and your right to vote and as your chair I will fight tooth and nail to ensure you are able to exercise that fundamental democratic right.
I have been proud to be your Chair during what was one of the dirtiest campaigns between a trade union and an employer.
I stood a long side you every day at Bedfont.
I went to court on your behalf and lost in the legal case for breech of contract, had my good name smeared and my photograph plastered over the front page of a national newspaper.
I thought those to be the darkest days I would ever have to endure as the chair of this branch, I was wrong.
In a bitter struggle with an aggressive management I knew who the enemy was and knew I had your backing and that gave me the strength to get through it.
Now I find myself stabbed in the back and smeared not by British Airways but by a campaign against this Branch being by a handful of our own members, the same individuals who were responsible for Crew Defence. Despite their abject failure in running Crew Defence, it now seems as though they want to run BASSA and will stop at nothing to do so.
I never thought I would see the day when Duncan Holley a man who sacrificed so much to be the figure head of that bitter dispute, would be hounded and humiliated from my own unions Facebook group by this handful of people who somehow claim to be “unionists”
They have accused the committee of either being on the take, traitors, liars, received pay offs and in doing so have acted against and damaged their own branch by trying to spread these utterly false and malicious rumours.
Yet they seem to forget that these are the same reps that stood up and fought for what was right during the dispute. These are the same reps that wrote and fought for every word in every agreement that you all work too.
Why on earth would we ever contemplate shafting our own members? Which seems to be the message they are desperate to push.
They are bitter people but seem to be unable to recognise that the war is over, we are not at Bedfont anymore, we are trying to rebuild a future for you our members and our union and since those dark days of 2010 we have been pretty damn successful in doing so and I am as proud of that as I was proud to stand on the Bedfont picket line. If proof were needed of how far we have come, consider this, we went on strike for 22 days to try and secure our future we now have an opportunity to achieve far more not by going on strike but by simply casting a vote.
Who would of thought that would be possible in the summer of 2010?
Don’t let these people ruin your future because they will not let truth get in the way of a lie if it advances their own position.
They do not have the interests of the membership at heart, they are purely out to cause trouble, yet ironically by attacking and trying to destabilise our union they undermine people’s confidence in their union and simply strengthen the hand of an employer. A number stood in our elections and failed to be elected but now want to run BASSA from the sidelines.
Well I have news for them they don’t, you do our members and that means all our members not just a militant minority. The meaning of democracy is being lost or distorted in their quest for power. They failed with crew defence so they now want to take over BASSA to promote their own importance.
We had a huge branch meeting in August; virtually unanimously the members took a vote that there would be one ballot, one person, one vote. That is democracy that is what our constitution demands we do and that is exactly what we are going to do.
Excerpt from BASSA constitution
a) Voting on general matters as determined by the Committee, may be put to the Branch meeting and decided by a show of hands. On all issues of a substantial nature, voting shall be by means of a consultative postal/electronic ballot of the relevant section of the Branch Community directly affected
This same group of individuals now claim to have two hundred names on an “online petition” (there are duplicate names, triplicate names, quadruple names, some people that don’t even fly, anonymous names and last but not least, more than a handful of crew that shall we say, lost their instructions on how to find us at Bedfont!) to call another meeting and force through a show of hands to prevent you from being able to vote via a democratic postal ballot.
I have news for them, its not happening.
They have tried to threaten and bully me with “outing’ me to the press and “dragging my name through the mud” If I do not accept this farce of a petition on something that has already been decided upon by you our members.
I was bullied in 2010 and it made me stronger, so they won’t bully me now, our members have spoken, there will be a ballot and they can threaten and spread their nasty propaganda all they like.
Propaganda is chiefly derogatory biased and misleading information, used to promote and publicize any particular harmful ideas, groups, or a person’s views on political, social, or economic cause or means of achieving a goal, or to discredit viable great ideas and means of doing public good as bogus and harmful.
Propaganda is the deliberate dissemination of deceptive and ambiguous information to pursuit the public in taking certain actions, which will eventually harm the public and benefit the criminal elites, regarding political, social, or economic strategy, and or public safety and security.
Whatever you decide is what will be, the information was published to allow everyone an informed choice the rest is up to you, wait until you get your ballot paper, carefully read the enclosed information, not rumour and propaganda.
I simply ask you the membership to make your own mind up, you know me and you know what I stand.
Lizanne Malone
Branch Chair
BASSA 1/2000 UNITETHEUNION